Maple Hill Cemetery, African American Section

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About 300 African Americans, including some who had been born enslaved, were interred here in the “colored section” of Maple Hill Cemetery between the 1890s and the mid-20th century. African Americans had been a significant presence in Tazewell County since its founding, representing more than 10 percent of the population in 1800. After emancipation, many remained in this area. Later in the 19th century, coal mines and railroads drew African Americans here from other regions. They helped build the town of Graham (later Bluefield), often working as brick and stone masons, cooks, and midwives. In 2006 a fence dividing the cemetery's white and neglected black sections was removed.

Department of Historic Resources, 2021

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Roger Mullins to June Brown, 12 Oct. 2004. Maple Hill Cemetery “Colored” Section burials (typescript). Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 20 March 2005, 11 Jan. 2006, 6 Oct. 2007, 15 July 2012. Ross Weeks Jr., ed., ‘Cause I’m Colored: The Black Heritage of Tazewell County, Oral History Interviews, with Nancy Bane Peery (Historic Crab Orchard Museum & Pioneer Park, Inc., 2001). Minnie C. Holley, Glimpses of Tazewell through the Holley Heritage (Radford: Commonwealth Press, 1977). Laura Lee Kerr, “Bondage on the Border: Slaves and Slaveholders in Tazewell County, Virginia (MA Thesis, College of William and Mary, 2011). Michael M. Meador, “Carving a Niche: The Blacks of Bluefield,” Goldenseal, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter 1987), 19-27.